


For Whose Sake

by Idiosyncrasies



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:53:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idiosyncrasies/pseuds/Idiosyncrasies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This man should never have been there, but he was. And she could be saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Playing Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of Mockingjay; references to coerced sexual relations from Finnick's time as a prostitute.

It's hard, sometimes, for me to keep sight of what exactly I have become. Am I a person being used for my assets? Am I a pretty bauble who was brought into this world just to be enjoyed? I don't always know which is better. Whatever I am is passed from hand to hand, always finding a smile and a kind word for a stranger who only knows my name because they could not look anywhere without seeing it. I don't hold that against them, because I certainly won't remember who they are once they've gone.

Annie is the only thing of which I am constantly certain. I know that by attending parties with this nobleman or that Duchess, by posing for cameras and laughing often enough, Annie is safe. When I think of Annie, I know exactly who I am: I am Finnick Odair, Victor from District 4. I am healthy. I am happy. I really am happy. The smiles are not forced, nor are the jokes fabrications. I enjoy what I do, only I feel that it is all misplaced. I should be happy with Annie, not the people who pay for my time and do not care for me. I resent even the few genuine, enjoyable moments I have with my clients because I cannot be happy without thinking of Annie. I cannot think of Annie without thinking of President Snow, or of how he could kill Annie with a snap of his fingers. I have nightmares about Snow's fingers.

Sometimes I see Snow's fingers in the dark, when a client is above me, touching me. Sometimes I imagine Snow's lips where they are not, where there is only a well-meant smile from the latest Capitol citizen who has come to admire my beauty. When these phantoms of Snow come to me, I have to leave reality and go elsewhere while I am touched in the most intimate places, where even Annie has yet to go. It is not my clients' fault that I sometimes see the malevolence of Snow in their faces. They don't care for me, but that's not their fault. They don't know better. They think I want this as much as they do, that I enjoy frivolity, and I am the one who tells them that. The Capitol people are raised in such a disgusting way, I know it would be a waste of time to tell them if I am unhappy. I grin for them; I caress them; I kiss them and stroke them; I reassure even the ones who ask, "may I kiss you here?" that they can do whatever they'd like. They cannot hurt me. When I need to, I can go somewhere far away with Annie. My clients' depraved indifference and Snow's phantoms can't touch me when I am with Annie.

I am ready to do this for as long as Snow wants, because it is what he wants. Because it is best for Annie. The idea that I might never see Annie again, that she may never be whole, is enough to fill my heart with ice. The still-worse alternative is that I stop this and Annie is killed, and Snow lets me live-because he will let me live-and I spend the rest of my days living my own life but living it without her. A life devoid of Annie Cresta's eyes or smile, or the possibility of seeing them again, is no life at all. But then, nor is a life where I am pliant to the will of anyone who has enough coin to claim me. In either life, I have no friends, and my memories of Annie both comfort and haunt me.

I do not expect this to change. Who would, in my place? Weekly, nightly, I am assigned to a new client, and my duties do not change. This is a patten that has kept Annie and me alive, if incompletely.

I am twenty-one, in my third year of playing the role of pretty bauble, when my handlers tell me to wait at one of my usual hotels for a male client who wants my time. I've spent an hour reclined on the velvety bed when he walks in. He is a man who looks to be my age, and whose skin is a natural bronze, free of any of the Capitol's ridiculous dyes or tattoos. Even in the dark, I can see that he is lean, maybe even healthy. He is unusual for the Capitol, but he has paid for me nonetheless.

"Hello," I croon in the voice I mastered for nights like this.

"Oh, you don't need to. Um."

I've taken off my shirt (more fine Capitol fabric) before I process his stammering. He does not want intimacy, at least not yet. This, too, is confusing, since the clients who want conversation usually spend the day with me, rather than the night. I comply and leave my shirt half-hanging from my body. The man watches me and I watch him.

After what seems like an age of this, the man reaches out with a hand and touches my shoulder. His skin is warm in a way unlike what I feel from my usual night clients. This warmth is not searing or abrasive; it is soft. He is concerned. In the moment that I am startled by this realization, the man takes in my face. I catch flexks of gold in the brown of his eyes as our gazes meet.

"I'm so sorry," he says.

That's when I begin to cry.


	2. Jericho

 

I do not remember falling asleep, although I wake up in the hotel's luxurious bed. It must be mid-afternoon: I have slept for over twelve hours, but still I feel exhausted. As my brain slowly restarts itself, I realize I am very alone. I remember a dream, too: a man had come to see me, and he was kind. He hugged me even though I was crying; he let me tell him about Annie. I talked for so long that I ran out of things to say, and the man nodded all the while, like he understood. Like he knew. 

Had he come at all? Had I just fallen asleep and dreamed up a caring stranger? I tried to remember the man, but it was like walking against a current. It had been too dark to really commit anything about him to memory, and the feelings his kindness brought out of me have obscured him even further. I am convinced I imagined him, except I do not think I am capable of inventing a voice as kind as that man's had been.

I get up and cross to bathroom, thinking I might as well use its excellent shower as long as it's been paid for. The bathroom is tiled white from floor to ceiling, with the occasional red tile placed at random as an accent. This goes well with the redness of the bedroom, but red is in no way my favorite color. It's not until I shed my clothes and step into the hot water that I am really awake. My confusion runs off me with the many scented soaps I use. I am sure that man was never there; whoever paid for me simply got scared and didn't show. That is a common occurrence, after all. 

When I step out of the shower and into a soft, cottony bathrobe, I am singing an old fishing song that I learned on the docks. I am pleased to have all this time to myself. I might exercise a bit or go to the park on the east side of the city to enjoy some fresh air--

I must have been blinking right when I stepped back into the bedroom, because when I look at the bed, the man from my dream is there, reading a book. I freeze in place. When he looks up at me, I hold my breath. His eyes are curious, a deep brown at the center, radiating out to a shimmering gold. I know those eyes see me scan the room and try to to form a plan: could run out the door or the window; if I move quickly, I could use the lamp as a weapon, because for one mad second I am convinced that he is a ghost or a mutt and somehow a lamp would save me from either of those. He just makes no sense, being here last night, then gone, then here again. Of course, he probably has a key into the room just as I have. He is a person who uses doors and walks on two feet and does not visit people in their dreams. With clever eyes like his, this man must know I would not be so terrified of him had I not just decided he couldn't exist.

We watch each other again and I accept that last night had happened: he had hugged me; I had cried and told him of Annie and how we dreamed of a quiet life, and how I hated being so far away. My face goes hot; I do not want to look at him, but he speaks and my eyes snap straight onto him. 

"Hi, Finnick. Would you like to sit?"

Though the man's melifillious voice relaxes me, hearing only confirms that he is real, that his kindness had shocked me into remembering him as a ghost, and that I am uncomfortable with this man-who-is-not-a-ghost knowing my name even though all of Panem knows it.

I nod mutely and, with a start, remember that he has asked me to sit. When I am beside him on the bed, his eyes do not slip through the gap in my robe that allows him view of my body. He does not want me. Part of me wishes he did, so he would look away from my face. I do not know what to do, pinned down by eyes like his.

"I've brought you books."

As he indicates a short stack of volumes I'd not registered until now, I see a pattern emerging: his eyes spook me into silence, and his voice gives me permission to move. I lean forward and touch his face, just to make sure this supernatural man is tangible. He blinks at the contact, and I cannot decide if I am happy or sad to lose sight of his eyes for a moment. 

"You're real," I say lamely, my hand still cradling his warm face.

"Of course I am!"

The man gives a small laugh. The sound is of it is not bemused or superior or pitying, like I have heard in so many other Capitol people, but almost musical. As the muscles in his face move, I see a fine scar that starts under his left eye and probably curves around underneath my hand. No dyes, no tattoos, and no apparent history of surgery. This man continues to soundly defy everything I know to be the norm.

I pull away, like I shouldn't be touching him, and he focuses on me again. A minute shift in his gaze tells me that it's my turn to unfreeze myself, but I can't think of what to say to this unsettling man whose only crime is being a person who manages to do what all my other clients do without being like them at all. It takes me a moment, but I realize that I don't like this man knowing my name because I don't know his. For the first time, I want to know.

"What do I call you?" I ask. I attempt to inject my voice with its usual level of cool, but I don't believe for a second that it works on this man. With that question finally asked, a million others grab my attention: He's brought me books? Why has he brought me books? I tear my eyes away from his, hoping to look at the titles of those books, but I can't see them. He knows I can read. He knows I like to read. What happened last night? Why is he interested in me?

The last thought has a sort of heavy echo. What could this man possibly want?

"My name is Jericho," he says in that voice of his, "I am a Scholar."

I hear my breath catch in a gasp and at once regret my tell. The man smiles, however.

"I'm glad I needn't explain myself, then," he says.

"I thought you were a myth," I blurt; then I cover my mouth, though that won't take my fumbling back.

"Myths are something else altogether," says Scholar Jericho. "How much do you know?"

"Only that you keep what is left of the Old Books," I say, recalling the smiling spindly client who had first told me of the Scholars after she'd had too much wine. The Scholars were like phantoms, she said: "you can never really prove they're there because you're not really supposed to know."

"It's a crime for Scholars to share their knowledge," Jericho says, "but I have given up on the laws of this world."

This is the first time Jericho's voice has been anything but smooth. I look down, suddenly realizing that the books he's brought me must be among the ones that The Capitol has kept from its people.Jericho picks up one of his books and I can see its title: The Illustrated Man.

"This one is my favorite," he says, so I take it.

"Why?" I ask, blinking as I turn the book over.

"A truce. I thought you might like them."

"Thank you, Jericho," I say. His name feels strange in my mouth, like it shouldn't be there. I still feel like he shouldn't be here.

"I'm here," Jericho continues, "because I can help you save Annie Cresta."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Fanfiction.net on 27 December 2011.


End file.
